TV Week turns 60

26 November 2017

It doesn’t seem that long since it was its 50th anniversary, but this week TV Week celebrates its 60th with the first of three commemorative issues.

It had humble beginnings as TV-Radio Week (with GTV9 personalities Geoff Corke and Val Ruff on the cover, pictured above) from editor Bruce Skeggs, and for the first ten years of its life the magazine was a pocket A5-sized magazine which sold for the grand sum each week of one shilling (ten cents).

After its first year of publication, TV Week (the “Radio” had been dropped from the title early in 1958) invited Melbourne readers to vote for their favourite stars and programs in the first TV Week Awards. After In Melbourne Tonight‘s Graham Kennedy and Panda Lisner (pictured) won the top awards for “Stars of the Year”, Kennedy named the awards the Logies — after Scottish TV inventor John Logie Baird.

TV Week continued to expand across the country as television itself expanded into new territories. The first Queensland and South Australian editions were published in 1959. Tasmania followed in 1960, and Western Australia in 1961.

The magazine has kept us informed on local and overseas TV news, people and programs and dutifully provided TV listings across the country. It has followed various developments, such as the changing design of TV sets in the 1960s, the advent of colour TV in the 1970s, the home video market in the 1980s and more recently the growth in streaming media.

Columnists such as Tony Johnston, John Michael Howson , Frank Thring, Bill Collins, Lawrie Masterson, John Laws, Andrew Mercado and Judy Nunn have given personal insights into what’s happening on and off the screen.

Movies were covered comprehensively by Ivan Hutchinson and for the last 20 years by David Stratton.

Ian ‘Molly’ Meldrum covered the pop music scene for many years — and TV Week also hosted music industry events such as The TV Week King Of Pop and The TV Week Rock Awards (pictured).

TV Week has taken on competitors at both national and state levels over its 60 years of publication. TV Times was its most enduring rival — in publication in various forms from 1958 until being taken over by TV Week in 1980 — but there have been others including Listener In-TV (Victoria), TV-Radio Guide (South Australia), TV Guide, TV News, TV World, TV Day, TV Star, TV Radio Extra (South Australia), What’s On Weekly, plus newspaper guides such as The Green Guide in Melbourne and magazine inserts in various Sunday newspapers. Even celebrity magazine Who Weekly tried to enter into TV Week’s turf when it started to publish a TV guide — but TV Week remains in 2017 as the sole national TV magazine on the market.